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Hi Brandy and welcome to the forum. I am glad your son has healed - how awful that must have been!

You did not say what part of Texas you live in.

Texas public schools do a very poor job of educating PG kids when they are young. And the more rural, the worse it gets. Most "gifted programs" start several years too late and are focused on the Kumon kids and the moderately gifted. There are a handful of programs that serve the MG to PG kids, but these are limited to working two grades ahead but run out of steam by 5th grade. ( I think a lot of the kids in these programs are highly prepped and not natively PG, either.) Other GT programs are highly rated, but I see very few National Merit Finalists from those schools so I wonder how many PG kids are in them.

Some privates that offer X-12 under one roof do subject accelerate PG kids and offer independent study after they exhaust the resources and then the kids go to college during part of the school day. This allows them the ability to spend time with their age peers for some things and time to spend with their intellectual peers for others. But even then privates will have just 1 or 2 PG kids for every 4 grades.

We are pretty much set on the private school route given that the precedent already exists in all of them to accelerate kids who need it.

Our son, Mr W (3y10m), was beginning to show behavior issues a few months ago in primary at a Montessori school. We moved him into an academic PreK with kids 12-18 months older than he. He is still beyond his classmates in most areas, but at least he is getting new material weekly and his classmates are much more verbal, so he can play with them. The teachers give him first grade material in math and reading and due to the age difference, he has to work a bit sometimes to stay ahead. His handwriting has really taken off the last few weeks and he can now spell tons of words.

The problems your son is facing are not new to his type. I was 3+ accelerated in private school before ending up in public in 2d grade. We moved around a bit and I was skipped from 1-3 grades in some school and none at all in others. I retreated into my own world and pretty much taught myself. My time from age 9 to age 14 was basically wasted from a formal academic perspective. I lost respect for my teachers and school in general when I was 7 and I did not gain it back until I ended up in an HS AP/Honors program with some very bright kids and teachers who had advanced degrees. Sports and scouting kept me connected to my age peers. These and a few highly intelligent adults along the way kept me from completely disengaging. When I entered HS and got a nearly perfect score on a national test was when I finally got some support.

Your son will learn respect for adults and his peers when he gets into a competitive program that matches his abilities and when he finds extracurricular programs with kids like him. I know I did. Right now he just gets criticism and in his mind he cannot distinguish between good and bad criticism. Coupled with learning respect and learning to view criticism properly, he will learn to correct and check his work as well as value others.

Unless the public school will radically grade skip him, he will not run into something that is hard for him for many years.

You can go the private school route. Not sure if you have considered this. Most top privates have a strong financial aid program that allows for middle and lower income families to get their kids a phenomenal education. Most have an application deadline in December and many have a large number of openings during the 5th grade year which will be your son's next grade. If you live in an area with a great private, I highly, highly recommend you attempt to go this route.

This leaves extracurricular programs that have a highly intelligent adult component to them. They can serve as a bridge until he gets strongly challenged.

Area clubs like robotics, astronomy, mathematics, botany, and computers are very good. I joined some of these when I was between 10 and 12 and really enjoyed them. It did not take the adults long to accept me and I felt respected. He really needs to have a deep interest in the subject though and you need the means to make sure he can attend on a consistent, regular basis. I really liked the Boy Scouts, too.

If you live in the DFW area, I can send you a PM on what we have found out about the public and private schools in the area. I also know a bit about the situation in Houston, too.